The present invention relates to electronic wiring diagrams and more particularly to a system for automatically converting legacy wiring diagrams into xe2x80x9cintelligent wiring diagramsxe2x80x9d.
Mechanics use wiring diagrams in the trouble-shooting of electrical problems on an airplane. The diagrams identify the wires and electrical components used in a particular subsystem of a plane, and also illustrate the flow of electricity through the circuits. However, the diagrams are difficult to read, electrical connectivity of electrical components is not always clear, and mechanics find it time consuming to manually look up component numbers in an electrical component database or large paper-based sources when there is no available database. This situation is exacerbated by the sheer volume of paper, as wiring manuals are often 5000 pages or more.
Most airplane systems have from dozens to hundreds of different potential configurations, reflecting different modifications, capabilities and manufacturing processes. Maintenance personnel spend a significant amount of time searching for the right configuration and consulting multiple volumes of binders to find the right component or system. Component density on the diagrams can also impede finding the right component on a diagram. These factors complicate the technician""s job, as pressure increases to find and comprehend the necessary information quickly and accurately.
There are no approaches in use commercially that solve the problem of rendering wiring diagrams in electronic data products in a way that makes the diagrams easily comprehensible or useful for mechanics. For example, Wiring Diagrams are not yet available in a portable maintenance aid product, principally because no satisfactory solution could be found for adequately rendering them. Consequently, mechanics continue to deal with wiring problems by using paper copies of the diagrams. Commercial vendors are offering tools for creating intelligent wiring diagrams, but they require manual re-authoring of the data to identify objects and make them interactive. This re-authoring process is extremely labor-intensive and error-prone as it requires manually creating hundreds of individual mouse-sensitive areas for each drawing (this is called xe2x80x9chotspottingxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9ccreating hotspotsxe2x80x9d) and specifying in a complex language what the system should do when the user points at or clicks each hotspots. For systems such as airplanes that involve many thousands of such diagrams, the cost of this manual approach is prohibitively expensive. Consequently, this invention provides capabilities that will otherwise not be made available.
This invention automatically converts legacy electronic wiring diagrams into xe2x80x9cintelligent wiring diagramsxe2x80x9d. This significantly improves the usability of wiring diagrams when displayed on a computer and makes the trouble-shooting of electrical problems easier, faster and more reliable. Using the intelligent graphics viewer, users can quickly comprehend complex electrical circuitry, simulate the changes in electrical continuity and access critical component information.
The present Intelligent Wiring Diagram System automatically and quickly converts wiring diagrams into electronically useful, interactive graphics. This novel approach completely eliminates the need for manual re-authoring. Within a few seconds the software is able to accurately identify circuit continuity and nomenclature of interest and put hundreds of hotspots on a diagram. If an expert were asked to perform the same work, it would take many days of intensive labor to re-author and validate a single wiring diagram.
The invention consists of a set of software modules that perform the conversion and a graphics viewer that provides the interaction. These modules are:
A. ELECTRICAL COMPONENT RECOGNIZER
The Electrical Component Recognizer searches through the graphical primitives in the original wiring diagram and applies heuristics in order to identify components such as fuses, circuit breakers, various types of switches, electrical connectors and relays.
B. WIRENET RECOGNIZER
Using the electrical symbols found by the Electrical Component Recognizer, the Wirenet Recognizer employs a unique and powerful Attachment Point Algorithm to discover which lines in the diagram represent individual wires and to infer the electrical continuity. The algorithm works as follows:
For each electrical component there are predictable locations where wires can attach; these are the attachment points. For example, in a circuit breaker wires attach at the terminal circles. Similarly, there are attachment points for fuses, resistors, and the other electrical components, except connectors which are handled separately. Also, it is common for designers to erase part of a wire to make space for a text string such as the wire number or a notation. Consequently, for wirenet generation purposes, we consider text elements to have their own attachment points where wires may be attached.
C. NOMENCLATURE RECOGNIZER
Using text matching techniques, the Nomenclature Recognizer scans the text elements in the diagram and finds those that match wire numbers, wire bundles, grounds, splices, terminals and other equipment numbers from databases.
D. XML GENERATOR
Extensible Markup Language (XML) provides a standardized methodology for describing information in a document. We have created a unique Document Type Definition (DTD) for describing graphical objects and the relationships between them, including specific elements for describing electrical components and electrical continuity, as well as references to part information. The SGML Generator produces the XML markup for all of the objects discovered by the three recognizers (electrical components, wirenets and nomenclature). The markup includes the geometry for each object""s hotspot and the relationships between objects and other objects and between objects and hotspots.
E. INTELLIGENT GRAPHICS VIEWER
Finally, the system includes a unique graphics viewer which not only renders the Wiring Diagram in its original form, but also uses the output of the XML generator to provide visual identification of objects and user-driven interactivity with the diagram. Every wirenet is xe2x80x9chotxe2x80x9d; when the user points at the wire with a pointer device (e.g. a mouse), the wire and its complete continuity inmmediately highlight. Furthermore, the user can affect that continuity by interactively changing the state of electrical components. The viewer also allows full text searching and highlighting of hits found on the diagram.